The Remee Lucid Dreaming Guide

For nearly as long as recorded history, the idea of consciously recognizing and controlling our dreams has been woven into the human narrative. From the Hindu Upanishads to Aristotle's On Dreams, people have been puzzling out the mysteries of lucid dreaming for centuries. In 2012, lucid dreaming experienced a massive surge in interest, and there's more information on lucid dreaming, the science behind it, and the modes and methods of experiencing it than there ever has been... yet the average person remains sadly unfamiliar with this fascinating, entertaining, and instructive activity. Lucid Dreaming can be a truly profound experience, but is often difficult to explain to someone who has never done it. Controlling the flow of your dreams is so visceral and ineffable that it can rarely be related in a meaningful way to a non-lucid dreamer.

Lucid Dreaming can be a truly profound experience, but is often difficult to explain to someone who has never done it.

Put simply, lucidity is knowing that you're dreaming, while you're dreaming. If you consider the fact that you have been dreaming many times a night, every night, for your entire life, it suddenly becomes clear how strange it is that your subconscious experiences these long and often bizarre excursions without any real awareness of it. Your mind simply accepts whatever disjointed data its presented with, pieces the parts together in a diffuse and nonlinear manner, constructs utterly implausible justifications for the impossible details and then plays back the resulting amalgam almost as if you're a character in a movie. Practitioners of lucid dreaming aim to take back this portion of their life, dissatisfied being a simple actor in their dreams, they choose to become the director and author of these nightly narratives.

Dissatisfied being a simple actor in their dreams, [Lucid Dreamers] choose to become the director and author of these nightly narratives.

So why do it?

"But Why?", you ask? An even better question: why not? If you spend two hours dreaming out of every 24, then you'll have experienced over two years worth of dreams in your lifetime. That's two years of sights and sounds, trials and tribulations, mundane meetings and exciting chance encounters - and no one bothered to ask for your input on where to go, what to do, who to meet. Wouldn't you prefer to have some control over such a limitless tool as your sleeping imagination? The applications of lucid dreaming are boundless. No matter what your intentions or expectations, there's something in lucidity for everyone. Sail the seven seas, traverse space and time, plot out the next great novel, or fly, fly, fly. In the dream world, the impossible was always possible, but with lucid dreaming, you can finally be in the driver's seat.

The applications of lucid dreaming are boundless. No matter what your intentions or expectations, there's something in lucidity for everyone.

How do I start?

We've all been there: you wake up from a dream, your mind overflowing with a richness of details and oddities of what, until seconds ago, you would have sworn we're actual events. How quickly this feeling recedes, stealing with it the detail that only moments before seemed crystal clear! Often you're left with little more than a few key points - I was in the house where I grew up, I was on a moving train, I was trapped under a pile of wet newspapers - and vague feelings. There are conflicting theories as to why this happens, including changes in neurochemistry between sleeping and waking, as well as the brain simply flushing out information it believes is of no use. No so fast, brain. Every journey to increased lucidity first requires a stop at better dream recall. Seize those moments where you can still smell the air of the dream, still recall the entire conversation you were just having, and write, write, write. Keep a notepad, voice recorder, or smartphone by your bed and be ready to reach for them the moment you awake.

Every journey to increased lucidity first requires a stop at better dream recall.

Why increase Recall?

In learning to reconstruct the details of our dreams by habitual journaling or dictation, we are training our brains to better navigate the hazy leftovers of the dream world and glean the most information possible from each dream. The goal here is twofold: first we are becoming more familiar with our personal dreaming styles. Second, and more importantly, we are taking special notice of recurring details. It is rarely apparent to anyone who doesn't spend time chronicling their dreams that we often repeat ourselves at night: we revisit scenes, characters, phrases, scents, signs, words and feelings time and time again during our dreams and the repetition is quickly forgotten by our waking mind. Keying into these phenomena, often referred to as dreamsigns, can help the dreamer become lucid. If you've recognized that you tend to encounter a red door in your dreams, then this is a perfect candidate for a dream sign. When you see a red door in waking life, simply ask yourself if you're dreaming - do a quick reality check, like counting your fingers, and you'll come to the conclusion that you aren't dreaming. Many people consider this silly or unnecessary, but the idea is to build habit. Habitual behavior can carry into dreams, and soon you'll see the aforementioned red door, remember to perform a reality check, and realize that this time, you ARE dreaming. See the sections titled "Reality Checks: Dream GPS" and "Remee as a Dreamsign" for more information.

Keying into these phenomena, often referred to as dreamsigns, can help the dreamer become lucid.

How do I increase Recall?

While using Remee consistently will boost your recall, there are many additional techniques for augmenting this efficiently. Some folks prefer stream of consciousness - remember as much as you can as quickly as you can. While this method is the quickest and easiest, thoughts will often run together, details will get jumbled, and in a mad rush to capture as much as possible, you end up confused and lose much of value. Another method is to hit the major points of the dream, as if you were constructing an outline, and then fill in levels of detail below each. Think of it like a puzzle, where the major points are the edge pieces that allow you to more easily build inward. Whatever method you choose to collate information on your dreams, you can count on the fact that with improved recall, you'll be fully armed and ready to truly begin your journey.

In the previous section we discussed the importance of recognizing dreamsigns as an important element in turning a regular dream into a lucid dream. In this section we'll review some of the common methods for checking reality.

1. Fingers

An easy way to determine if you're dreaming or not is to count your fingers twice. You'd be surprised how often you'll come up with a different answer the second time. Focus not on the strangeness of the results themselves, but the strangeness of the fact that the two results don't match. Your brain is good at justifying the unusual in dreams, so it's much easier for it to create a false memory of a weird number of fingers than it is for it to explain why counting your fingers twice would result in different answers.

2. Lights

Why lightswitches behave strangely in dreams is a mystery, but common lucid dreaming wisdom is that most of the time, in a dream, lightswitches will either not affect the amount of light in your dream or operate something else altogether. This one is, in our experience, less reliable than the previous simply because it's much easier for your mind to justify a lightswitch being inoperable.

3. Breathing

Close your mouth and pinch your nose. Now try and breathe out. If your head is designed correctly, nothing is happening, and you might be starting to black out. But when you're dreaming, breathing with your mouth and nose plugged is a piece of cake, and particularly difficult for your mind to justify. Next time you see Remee's lights (or whatever your preferred dreamsign is) perform this reality check and you'll be lucid in no time.

4. Words

Much like the finger counting exercise, a sentence or even a single word will often become jumbled or change completely while dreaming. If you've spotted a dreamsign or simply suspect that you're dreaming, look around for the closest print - a magazine, book, website, anything that's handy, and read a full sentence. Now look away from the screen or page for a moment and look back. Changes to the text, sometimes significant and sometimes subtle, will almost always be present.

Remee as a dreamsign

Now that we know the main components of a achieving lucidity - recall, dreamsigns, reality checks - we can discuss the role Remee plays in increasing your chances for a lucid dream. The process of identifying common dreamsigns is a critical step, but it unfortunately relies on the supposition that these signs will appear consistently and that you'll be presented with them often enough in waking life to have to opportunity to build the proper habits that will help you realize you're dreaming. If your recurring dreamsigns are unusual, like exploding socks or mustachioed kittens, you are unlikely to encounter this regularly in your day to day life. This robs you of the chance to check reality when this happens.

Enter Remee, your new dreamsign. Inside what looks like a normal sleep mask are six lights, set to brightnesses, patterns, and time intervals that you specify. The lights will wait a specified initial delay (4.5 hours with default settings) and then show a series of light patterns of your choosing, repeating after a specified short delay (10 minutes by default) throughout the night. Given the nature of sleep patterns, the probability of one of these patterns appearing during a dream is fairly high. This now becomes your recurring dreamsign. No longer are you shackled to your dreaming mind's whims, waiting for an arbitrary dreamsign that may or may not be coming - the lights are there and all you have to do is train yourself to recognize them when they occur.

Your first few nights sleeping with Remee, you may wake up with a memory of seeing the lights, but failing to recognize them in the moment. Consider this a very positive development! Seeing the lights in your dreams is the hardest part. The act of remembering it (especially reinforced by the act of writing it down) is what will help you on the way to latching on to them as your dream sign.

No longer are you shackled to your dreaming mind's whims, waiting for an arbitrary dreamsign that may or may not be coming - the lights are there and all you have to do is train yourself to recognize them when they occur.

Being Lucid

Consider two scenarios.
Scenario one:
You're walking down a dark and narrow corridor. There's a vague sense that you aren't alone, but you aren't sure who its walking with you. Your feet feel strangely heavy and a steady wash of aquatic sounds surround you. Suddenly, lights appear! Back and forth in your field of vision, then blinking in each eye separately. A rush of understanding fills you as you realize that the lights belong to Remee and this, at long last, is your first lucid dream! "I'm dreaming!" you think. "I can do anything I want! Anything….anything….anything…" You wake up in your bed, exhilaration melting into disappointment. A lost opportunity.

Scenario two:
You're walking down a dark and narrow corridor. There's a vague sense that you aren't alone, but you aren't sure who its walking with you. Your feet feel strangely heavy and a steady wash of aquatic sounds surround you. Suddenly, lights appear! Back and forth in your field of vision, then blinking in each eye separately. A rush of understanding fills you as you realize that the lights belong to Remee and you're having another lucid dream. "Ah yes! I'm dreaming again. I believe I have some unfinished business in feudal Japan!" Zap. No more narrow corridor. No more vague presence. Just cherry blossoms and katana. Score!

Whatever your methods for inducing lucidity, hanging on to it can be just as difficult as achieving it in the first place.

Whatever your methods for inducing lucidity, hanging on to it can be just as difficult as achieving it in the first place - especially if you're just beginning. Typically your first few encounters with a lucid dream will be more like scenario one than scenario two. The primary reason for this is simply overexcitement. It's hard to explain the euphoria that accompanies lucidity, and it is similarly difficult to contain this euphoria to keep yourself from waking up every time it happens. Luckily, the lucid dreaming community has, over time, developed several techniques for focusing and staying lucid.

1. Relax!

This may seem obvious, but it's important. Close your (dream) eyes, take a deep (dream) breath, and say to your (dream) self, "Ok, I'm dreaming. No big deal. Just relax and allow it to stabilize."

2. Focus

If you're in the aforementioned dark corridor, closely examine the texture of the wall. Stare at your shoelace. Check out your fingernails like a jeweler examining a diamond. This sort of granular focus can bring stability and longevity to a lucid dream.

3. Rub

A tried and true trick with a good anecdotal success rate. Something about the tactile sensation of feeling your palms rubbing against each other seems to help many dreamers solidify lucidity.

4. Spin

This is a multi-purpose tool - it can be used to bring stability to a fading dream scene, but it can also be used to forcefully "change" a scene that you're having trouble controlling.

In closing...

Hopefully this guide has given you a better understanding of what Lucid Dreaming is and the role Remee can play in increasing the frequency of your lucid dreams. If you have further questions, refer to our FAQ or drop us a line. If you'd like to order a Remee, you can do so in our Store. Keep dreaming!

Remee was designed and engineered in Brooklyn, NY by the dreamers at Bitbanger Labs.

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